The Yankton Sioux tribe in South Dakota are developing a long-range project to define and understand water quality on their reservation, in partnership with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. The tribe wants to develop a co-management plan for the Missouri River Bioregional (MRB) watershed that will restore traditional Native practices of water and land management. To realize this goal, an inventory is needed of the plants, wildlife, water, aquatic life, and cultural and ceremonial sites. An important part of this effort is to define the water quality in the Missouri River Bioregion with an initial focus on the approximately 150 mile stretch of the Missouri River between Lower Brule Reservation and the city of Yankton.

We are looking for help with each of these steps – processing and cleaning existing water quality data and pollution sources including non-point pollution sources in the targeted region on both reservation and non-reservation land. This project can be part of a thesis or internship, please discuss with your advisor. Overall goal is to create an interactive map of the region across different databases at different sites. Skills in ArcMap/arcpy and R/RStudio desired but not required. Meetings are both remote and at Tufts University.

Interested applicants should reach out by February 25th, 2020. Please contact Kyle Monahan for more information and to get involved at kyle.monahan@tufts.edu. Please send your resume and a short paragraph on your interest and background with the email subject titled “CHEJ Internship 2020.”